19 Responses to “Dave from the block”

Albert. M. Bankment

This reminds me, as it doubtless will have reminded you (!), of the wise words of Hosea 8:7:
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”

As if every politician’s portrait isn’t ‘improved’ to a greater or lesser degree. So, when Gordon Brown’s face miserable, scowling face (or, as is even more terrifying, he could be smiling) is plastered all over election posters, and is subjected to the same sort of freelance treatment as this, I wonder how many Labour supporters will be priggishly bleating that it’s somehow unfair, disrespectful, childish, misleading or debasing the nobility of political debate.

Joe

Depressed, but not surprised, to see Tory trolls out as usual. I hoped a blog like this would be relatively spared but I guess you guys are drawn in like flies.

Really, it’s an embarrassing poster by anyone’s standard and I reserve the right to laugh. He’s been touched up to a point where he’s practically inhuman (even without Labours help, just look at the original…) with a nauseating message that just weeps with forced sincerity.

It’s a poor attempt to ape Labour’s 1997 campaign posters of Blair looking serious with the slogan ‘enough is enough.’ If this is any indication of Cameron’s campaign plan, there might be hope yet.

P.S. Albert, you might want to check the ‘Not Flash, just Gordon’ effort Saatchi and Saatchi came up with while Gordon was still popular; I think Labour are aware that Gordon’s smile is not his greatest asset.

Ed

Albert, I think we all know that Gordon’s face isn’t his best asset. If he looked like Cameron, he’d have got a lot less stick than he has, and I somehow doubt that the campaign is going to revolve around spending money we don’t really have on reminding people what he looks like.

It’s different with Cameron of course, because a) almost nobody knows the rest of his frontbench, bar the widely despised Osborne, b) you can’t run on his entertainingly vague ‘policies’ and c) in the words of Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit ‘his face has no edges, like runny cheese’.

Albert. M. Bankment

This isn’t about Brown or Cameron, and it certainly isn’t about Tory trolls. It’s about the foolish inflation of a non-story about airbrushing, because they all do it; politicians, actors, businessmen. Indeed, WE would all do it if a photograph was that important as a projection of ourselves. It’s more about the debasing of sensible political argument with (occasionally very funny) playground tactics. I think that Brown made a tactical error by scoring his cheap points at PMQs. There’s a danger that Tory retaliation in kind will come back and bite Labour hard at some stage over this absurdly long phoney war before the election proper. Perhaps dignity, in the face of Cameron’s mockery, could be Brown’s most potent weapon.

Will Straw

I’m glad that this and the related post on the 13th Duke of Wybourne have provoked a reaction. The left blogosphere often gets accused of lacking humour, but when we post something light-hearted we’re accused of being negative and lacking vision. Maybe I’m wrong but I can’t imagine Guido faces the same critique when he makes fun of Gordon Brown’s image.

We’re a website committed to (i) promoting progressive ideas and policies, and (ii) critiquing conservative ones. We make no apologies for that and will continue to make the important points about Cameron and Osborne’s lack of clarity and flakiness. The airbrushed picture illuminates this and has clearly struck a nerve so we will stick with it.

But, despite what our critics say, we devote a large amount of space to promoting new ideas and make a positive case for a progressive Britain. The manifesto ideas down the right hand side are one example and most days we post supporting progressive policies eg in the last few days the legitimate role for the TUC in development policy, the Harlem’s Children Zone, a High Pay Commission, a graduate tax for Higher Education. Watch out in the next couple of weeks for a series of new ideas that we’re promoting.

For those interested, the poster above references the Jennifer Lopez song “Jenny from the block”. The “rocks” refer to her diamonds. As I said, light-hearted fun. //www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFmAYh3aRc

Joe

Anon; why would you be asking us about Labour’s poster plans? Really we’re unlikely to have any more idea than you. Are there not better things to speculate about? Regardless, the Tories traditionally get their posters out early. I believe the joke about Dave’s ‘Rocks’ is a pun on a Jennifer lopez song playing on his attempt to come across as normal(so yep, probably an age thing!)

Albert; it is a story because while many images are touched up, this poster somehow missed the quality control filter that stops people coming out as martians, and it helps illustrate our suspicions that Cameron is a phoney; airbrushed, vapid and insubstantial.

If (and when) Labour make similar mistakes I wouldn’t expect the rabid right wingers inhabiting the internet to take the moral high ground, which in anycase is rather boring, so let’s not be so poe-faced?

Anon E Mouse

Joe – I want to see Labour produce some policies that may make them electable. Not that drivel from that idiot Ed Balls the other day – some real doable policies that resonate with the electorate.

I am sick of hearing about Inheritance Tax, not because it’s an unfair tax (to tax peoples estates they have paid tax on when they’re dead is sick to me) but because it shows Cameron, by not announcing any other definite policies will drift into power – not through merit but because of the total ineptitude of the Labour Party.

You may have not have an idea of the posters but then who does? Whoever is running Labour at the moment is clueless. I wouldn’t pay half the cabinet in washers – Miliband (both are as bad) should have been sacked as foreign secretary the other day for not supporting Brown. Personally I detest Brown but he is entitled to loyalty or oppose him.

Labour should ignore Cameron like Blair did with Michael Howard – don’t keep chasing his tail.

Left Foot Forward should stop the negative “Tories are bad people” nonsense and start promoting the idea that Labour have something to offer the country and NEED to be re-elected because blah blah blah

When Labour get the guts to call the election, if the negative campaigning is still running all Cameron has to do is put up a poster of Gordon Brown and say “Do you really want five more years of this?” and it will be over.

Cameron may be airbrushed but Brown is an unelected detested thug of a bully who throws mobile phones at his own people. Who do you think the public will vote for?

Anon, what would you like to see Labour do? We know the policies and personalities you don’t like, so how about some positive suggestions and policy ideas from you as to what you’d like to see implemented.

Anon E Mouse

Shamik – I’d like to see Labour come up with some policies that represent and chime with the people in this country – their paymasters.

I’d like to see the promotion to the cabinet of MP’s that have actually done something in the world rather than going into politics as a career – Ed Miliband? Douglas Alexander? Sarah Tether? What have these people actually done in the real world – who do they represent? Politics should be to affect change and improve the lives of people who are not politicians.

I’d like to see politicians keep their word or don’t give it. The Lisbon Treaty was disgraceful way to treat people in this country – chances are if the case was put with passion it may have been a YES. Since Brown believed it was going to be a NO vote and therefore he’d lose, he knew the government were acting in their own interests and not the countries – don’t treat us as fools.

I’d like to stop the whips in the commons having the bullying power they have over the members – if something is wrong it’s wrong. It then leads to outright hypocrisy – prime example: Jack Straw goes on a “picket line” in Blackburn with his voters to “Save the local post office” then goes into the commons and votes to continue the closure program. Who leant on him I wonder?

I have mentioned no specific policies Labour could implement just general codes of behaviour they don’t live up to. That would be a start but I’ll tell you what Shamik, if you actually believe that Labour with Brown at the helm deserve to be elected then you and anyone else with that mindset are actually
contributing to the very decay that the party suffers.

Give me a couple of days and I’ll mail you and Will some actual policies directly. I am an opinionated Northern, middle aged, working class engineer and not subject to the pampered media studies lawyerly lifestyle you Londoners are.

Perhaps the real answer to your question Shamik is “Get into the real world” – politics is not football or cricket you know.

Martyn Rowe

I entirely agree with Anon E Mouse and I don’t think there is any cogent argument against what has been said. The Lisbon Treaty, the 10p tax band, the belated lack of focus on our troops in Afghanistan, McBride, the Gurkhas debacle – all are shameful incidents and an indictment of Brown’s dreadful leadership.

There has been little denouncement of him from within the party (with some notable exceptions) because he is a crafty and indefatigable clansman who has spent roughly 25 years creating his power-base on placemen within the Labour apparatus. The lack of will to challenge his viewpoint and Brown’s paranoid grasp on absolute power has created a policy-vacuum.

I understand – and I sympathise – that many MPs allowed Brown to achieve power because they a) thought he deserved it and b) were convinced, just like the media, the public and even the oppostion parties that he had a policy masterplan with which he would change Britain.

He didn’t. He had nothing. Power was all he cared about. The Emperor had no clothes.

Now you are stuck with him. He will lose the election, and lose it badly. In the meantime the Labour leadership will become remorselessly negative and nasty and untruthful and scorch the Earth beneath them. Backbench Labour MPs will only be able to sit, mouth the usual lines of narrative support and wait to find out if they’ve been swept away with the anti-Brown sentiment.

Progressive individuals and Labour supporters can surely do nothing but admit that Brown’s coronation has been a disaster. Brown’s years have been a sad era for the left in the UK and hopefully never again will the intellectual vanguards within the movement be so supine in the face of a power-obsessed bully with regard only for himself.

Joe

How tedious; the usual right wing tosh that right wingers repeat ceaselessly. Anon, I doubt you represent the ‘people’ of this country, and I think it would be a very bad idea for the Labour party to follow your advice. You are clearly on the right, you also know it, and it’s all so very, very boring.

There’s no point in wasting time discussing policy only to point out that no, we don’t tend to agree with your selective negativity, your political positions and analysis of the Cabinet. Surprised? You’re entitled to your views, why not discuss them on a right wing blog?

Anon, you have absolutely no idea who I am. You’re ‘guess’ is pathetically inaccurate for both me and just about everyone I’ve ever met in the Labour party. I wouldn’t be so rude as to speculate on details of your life and personality, other than to suggest that you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.

Anon E Mouse

Joe – I am from a Labour working class background from the old school where people say what they mean and mean what they say. I am naturally right wing hence my support and my votes for Tony Blair. I absolutely resent the “full third term” bit and the disgraceful way Brown behaved.

I will respond more fully later – I’m on a new iPhone and not used to it and btw you said I was clever not me.

Anon E Mouse

Joe – Having looked over your posting again and being in front of a real keyboard I have a couple of point to make in response.

Your first paragraph: If you don’t believe that a Labour government slavishly following (or perhaps encouraging if that liar Cambell is to be believed) the actions of a rabid right wing Republican president called George Bush into foreign wars is not traditionally a position adopted by the right then I don’t know what is. Labour used to support CND for goodness sake – your point is clearly not based in reality – in the 12 years of Labour we have had numerous wars – in fact this government seems to love foreign interventions that have noting to do with us.

The cabinet: Since we know that (at least) six of them want rid of this useless bully of a Prime Minister and his popularity has hit a historic in the polls – which will crucify Labour at the election – I can only conclude that (again) you are wrong here as well.

Who are you Joe?: No idea but you display all the usual New Labour traits that people find unattractive, that is always criticise the messenger and never answer or discuss the message. (That comment was aimed at Will Straw and Shamik Das btw – criticise me on what I said by all means but not on what I haven’t said please, that’s rude).

So you say “There’s no point in wasting time discussing policy only to point out that no, we don’t tend to agree with your selective negativity, your political positions and analysis of the Cabinet”.

To be clear Joe I am not selectively negative, I am un-selectively negative about this hopeless bunch – pretty much they are all useless and weak, if they weren’t that idiot Brown would be gone by now.

I like winners myself (like Blair) because winners can affect change and improve other peoples lives – losers can’t.

If more people like me had challenged the way Labour was run with an inner circle of thugs and bullies – Liam Byrne, Damian McBride, Derek Draper and his ilk – we might be more electable.

It may be OK to you Joe to smash office furniture and throw mobile phones in a hissy fit to get your own way but to me that is not OK – you call my opinions negative if you want. I’ll call them decent.

Perhaps that’s why Jack Straw was ‘leant’ on over the Post Office – why do you think that happened Joe? Give me another explanation for it and I may change my view.

Labour is going to be hammered because they’re useless under Brown not because the Tories are any good and people like you with your views will hasten their demise.